Be Kind to Animals

 Saturday, July 6
2:00 to 4:30 pm

Tickets $15 ($13 for current VPES and NMAS members)
Advance tickets available at
http://bekindtoanimals.brownpapertickets.com/

The need for humane education, in a formal sense, has been echoed in schools, religious institutions and literature since eighteenth-century England. Philosopher John Locke was one of the first to make the connection between childhood cruelty to animals and its escalation to cruelty to other people in adulthood. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, animal welfare campaigners used the “Be Kind to Animals” message to reach audiences of all ages.At one point in America’s history, over 70,000 chapters of the Bands of Mercy, a humane youth organization akin to the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, existed in the country. Even White Fang and Dances with Wolves author Jack London ran his own youth group, known as the Jack London Club, that addressed animal cruelty.

Keri Cronin is an Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Department at Brock University. She is also a Faculty Affiliate in Brock's Social Justice & Equity Studies Graduate Program and the editor of The Brock Review. She is the author ofManufacturing National Park Nature: Photography, Ecology and the Wilderness Industry of Jasper National Park (UBC Press, 2011) and the co-editor (with Kirsty Robertson) of Imagining Resistance: Visual Culture & Activism in Canada (Wilfrid Laurie University Press, 2011). Her current research focuses on how 19th-century welfare activists used art and visual culture in their campaign and educational efforts.

Presented by the National Museum of Animals & Societyhttp://www.museumofanimals.org/